Nuclear industry leaders agree to adopt SAMGs across all facilities

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) reported on Thursday that chief nuclear officers within the nuclear energy industry have approved an initiative to maintain strategies in preparation for potentially severe accidents.

The initiative, called the Severe Accident Management Guidelines (SAMG), consists of strategic actions that can be employed when an emergency situation becomes out of the control of emergency operating procedures. The SAMG provides additional resources to cope with an accident of this scope.

“The goal of the industry initiative is to promote timely updates of site-specific SAMGs based on technical guidelines developed by the reactor owners’ groups,” NEI Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer Tony Pietrangelo said. “It also requires that SAMGs reflect changes to the facility over time and are integrated with other emergency response guidelines.”

The SAMG were initially developed in the early part of the 1990s. The NEI reports that all nuclear facilities will be issuing letters to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that will detail the planned SAMG for their specific sites by the end of 2015.

The NRC will not be approving plans; instead, their plan is to conduct regular inspections on the guidelines that are established and report any deficiencies in line with NRC oversight and regulation.

The NRC is currently preparing a rule-making package that aims to mitigate events that are considered to be beyond design-basis regulations. SAMGs were included in an earlier draft of this package, but the NEI reports that they have since been removed.